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RHLSTP Mondays continue to be such joy I wonder why I even bother attempting to do anything else. Imagine if my job was just this. 26 Mondays and two interviews a night. Six days a week off.
And if I hadn’t got a wife, a family and a mortgage, yup, that would probably have worked.
But fuck me, it’s a great way to spend a Monday - today watching youtube videos of Trev and Simon and cram-reading Jess Phillips’ book. Then heading to the Leicester Square Theatre, hanging out with my brilliant team (and George the incompetent sound guy) and then chatting for two to three hours with some cool, funny, interesting people.
Trev and Simon are kindred spirits and I guessed correctly that like me they may have been influenced by the anarchy of the Banana Splits (though they weren’t as keen on Tiswas as me). The Banana Splits are largely on the Fringes of my memory, but I still recall the excitement of watching the mayhem unfold, the excellent theme song (I am increasingly of the belief that if you can create iconic opening titles to your show then you will be remembered fondly long after everyone has forgotten what happened in the show) and the cutaways to characters popping out of cupboards and clocks. I didn’t know that it was basically a rip-off of Rowan and Marty’s Laugh-In crossed with the Monkees, or that it was really just a marketing exercise to sell Kellogg’s cereals. I liked the Banana Splits and wasn’t that bothered about the cartoons, but weirdly the cartoons are mainly what I remember now, (Size of an elephant).
It was a big influence on what I wanted to do with This Morning and in fact most of our work was in some sense a fucked up version of kids and daytime TV, without ever really attempting to parody it. A homage maybe. And the Banana Splits were their own fucked up homage too, I suppose
What I really loved about Trev and Simon on rewatching them, was that they didn’t bother with doing much more than put on a funny costume and wig and then be themselves. And that they didn’t really try to create much distinction between the two of them, often playing essentially the same character as the other. I took the piss on the podcast a little bit, but I genuinely love this about them. Whoever they were they were Trev and Simon, two grown men, somehow caught up in doing a kids TV show, and gamely giving it a go, whilst being aware of how ridiculous it and they were. They just wanted to be funny and were consequently much more subversive than most of the alternative comedy acts that were doing what was laughably called grown-up telly.
Clever comedy is OK, but it takes real skill to do stupid comedy well. Or maybe genuine likability, which most comedians don’t actually have! Too many comedians want to be taken seriously, and I haven’t been immune to that myself, but why? What makes you great as a comedian is that you’re funny. Being serious is easy. You just have to pull a serious face. Being funny is really difficult. Don’t let the serious people drag you down to their level by their facade that they are cleverer or more worthy than you. They all fucking wish they could make people laugh.
Trev and Simon always felt like two mates fucking about in the dressing up box and it’s nice to have it confirmed that all that is true. And they’re still mates. And still fucking around in the dressing up box. And God bless them for that.
It was a very funny and revealing chat, as was the subsequent one with Jess. We’re six podcasts into series 13 and I have to say that I think we’ve done six crackers. Jess’ one was a bit less silly and covered some more serious topics (because ultimately I just want to be taken seriously), but we also got on to lift engineering and telling people to fuck off.
Simon (or Trev, there is no way to tell them apart and they could easily have just done an act that was one of them) recalled meeting me and Stew in the 90s on a Rowland Rivron show. I don’t even remember working with Rowland Rivron, let alone meeting Trev and Simon, which is odd, because I was a fan of theirs and we didn’t meet that many famous people. Simon asked us to sign his Fist of Fun annual and told us how much he liked the show (and you know, it was so unusual to find a famous fan that I am amazed I don’t remember this either - I can’t even blame being on drugs) and apparently I signed it “To Simon, you are an idiotâ€. I am sure I thought he would find that funny and hopefully he did, but it obviously played on his mind a little bit as he asked me if I did that to everyone.
Who knows?
He is an idiot though. But a brilliant one.
These podcasts will be out in early March. And there’s more brilliant line-ups to come and remarkably still tickets for all of them apart from Brian Blessed/Pippa Evans. Come along. This show is so much fun. I can’t believe that this is (part of) my job.
